EFF Ranks Service Providers For Who Stands Up To Copyright/Trademark Bullies

from the good-to-see dept

We've written in the past about the EFF's Who Has Your Back rankings, in which it looks at various internet companies to see who protects your privacy against governments and lawsuits. Now, the EFF has come out with an offshoot chart, looking at who has your back when it comes to bogus copyright and trademark demands. The only two companies that get a perfect score are Automattic/WordPress and NameCheap, as you can see on the full chart. The worst, somewhat surprisingly, is Tumblr, which scored a big fat zero out of the five listed items.

Automattic's Wordpress.com and NameCheap were the only two companies to receive five out of five stars. However, two other companies were recognized for going the extra mile: Etsy, for providing educational guides, and Twitter, for publishing regular and thorough transparency reports. Overall, 10 companies did not publish adequate transparency reports, highlighting an information black hole for consumers. Additionally, four companies missed a star for their counter-notice practices—a critical procedure for restoring content that may have been taken down without cause.

Twitter lost a point for not documenting the counternotice process. Etsy lost a point for failing to have a transparency report (something I'm guessing the company will do before too long). Facebook also doesn't have a transparency report -- though it does have one for government requests, so hopefully it will expand that to copyright and trademark takedown requests as well. YouTube lost points for not requiring a DMCA notice (thank you ContentID) before taking down content. Imgur also doesn't require a DMCA notice (which surprised me).

The EFF's original "Who Has Your Back" effort really did help shame many companies into upping their game in protecting the privacy of users from government requests. Hopefully this new one will do the same for copyright and trademark takedowns.

Reader Comments

Question: can we expand Youtube rating to Google as well? (Would Google get the same ratings if Youtube is excluded?)

Tumblr is one surprise for me there even though I should have seen it coming from past news. As a bit of a suggestion I'd expand this list with many other services. Still it's a nice initiative from EFF. Kudos for them!

ISPS

Good work and all but for REAL balls, check out iiNet in Australia which has gone to the High Court once and likely to do so again, in defence of its customers. Credit where credit is due. They deserve a big wrap for what they are doing here.